Study #5: Criminal Justice FINAL PART 1 In order for public organizations to understand the issues surrounding criminal behavior, we must determine if a relationship between criminal behavior and...

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Study #5: Criminal Justice FINAL PART 1 In order for public organizations to understand the issues surrounding criminal behavior, we must determine if a relationship between criminal behavior and poverty exists. The importance of this issue is to identify if there is a relationship between low-income (poverty) and crime. If there is, we can begin to implement solutions that will potentially reduce crime. For example, offering more resources to troubled areas that will aid the households in them so that they are not subject to the life of poverty and crime. This analysis report is for my local law enforcement agency. Is there a correlation between poverty and crime? The reason people should be aware of this evident issue is because reducing crime not only helps a community feel safer and further develop but it also helps the economy and its state. With a community effort, resources would be abundant enough to aid poverty prone areas/ households completely which will desirably result in reduced crime. NOTE* This is an observational study due to the inferences made on subjects and measuring of variables of interest without assigning treatments to the subjects. The issues within criminal justice affects the entire population; anywhere crime is present. However, the main focus of this study are populations within poverty and/or with criminal backgrounds to find out if a relationship exists between the two. The population of my data is anyone that went to the courthouse on the days that I went to collect samples, that could have randomly been asked to participate. The sample is 31 random people in and around the Los Angeles courthouse over the month of July. The subjects voluntarily gave their family income and self-reported incidents of criminal activity. The plausible way the sample has been chosen is that the subjects were in or near the courthouse. A courthouse typically has many defendants going in and out of court, so it made sense to ask people on their spare time about their household income and criminal activity in this area. Problems related to bias responses in this scenario could be that they were voluntary. Voluntary sampling methods tend to be biased because the subjects that participate may have strong views on a topic/ subject that drive them to participate in a study. However, random sampling methods may balance that flaw out because each member of the population near or around the courthouse had an equal chance of being selected as subject in this data. Each of my samples are independent of the other members of the population. When determining if the data are quantitative or qualitative; this data would be quantitative discrete data. I’ve come to that conclusion because we are able to measure or count the data. Measuring poverty is the only difficult element but the Census Bureau does that for us; this analysis was based off their [U.S. Census Bureau] official poverty measurement (OPM). All other elements of this equation are numbers that can be easily counted and/or measured. However, some may argue what qualifies as criminal activities; So, to specify arrests do not equal convictions and number of convictions isn’t a strong variable with the Three Strike Law in CA. The measurements we do have are the self-reported instances of criminal activity and our records to refer to. The scenario would allow for ratio level of measurement because we are able to pull a mean, median, and mode. The order of the values is known, and we can quantify the difference between each value. The independent variable in this study is the income of households that are officially considered poverty. Nothing this study will present can change their household incomes. With that being said, the dependent variable are the criminal activities that are possibly related to low income subjects. So, to clarify; Family Income (in thousands) is the independent variable and the numbers of criminal activities are the dependent variables. FINAL PART 2 X-Axis: Family Income (in thousands); Independent variable. Y-Axis: Number of self- reported instances of criminal activity; Dependent variable. Second Vertical axis: Percentage of cumulative total. Mean: 28.83870968 Median: 13.5 Mode: 0 Standard Deviation: 40.44311672 I have constructed a Histogram (pareto) with my data to show a visual of the relationship between poverty and criminal behavior. As you can see by looking at the x-values, you may notice that the lower the family income, the number of criminal activities goes up. I do have one contradicting family income, that is the one for 12K income with 0 criminal activities, but it does not seem to affect my graph and/or numbers. In addition to my Histogram, I’ve put together the three measures of central tendency: the mean, median, and mode. REFERNCES: Burdziak, A. (2017) Columbia Daily Tribune: Experts say connection between crime and poverty is complex. Retrieved from: https://www.columbiatribune.com/51c865d8-9d32-58b9-b691-a52dcf6dff48.html University of Wisconsin-Madison. (2019) Institution for Research on Poverty: How Is Poverty Measured? Retrieved from: https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resources/how-is-poverty-measured/ 1